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I started this blog (gemlog?) a couple of weeks ago after I realized I had a lot of cooped-up thoughts that needed expressing. Why did I suddenly realize this as an otherwise well-adjusted (heh) 34-year-old, you may ask? The answer lies, as it often does, in large amounts of drugs.
Just over a year ago, three friends and I rented a cabin in upstate New York. It was the midst of the pandemic and we were all badly in need of a departure from our otherwise mundane lives in the cities of the East Coast, so the natural solution was to head for the hills. Once the plan had been laid and the AirBnB booked, my friend in Philly called me with an unexpected request.
(Conversation reconstructed)
"Would you mind bringing some drugs up to the cabin?" he asked.
"Why yes, I would be happy to," I answered.
And so the plan was hatched. I happily set off on Amtrak with a backpack loaded with about $300 worth of weed and, more importantly, shooms, both of which can be conveniently ordered online and delivered to one's home here in DC. A quick brush with the Amtrak police dogs in Union Station rattled me, but undeterred, I got on the train and made it to my friend's place in Philly no worse for the wear. After a quick pit stop in NYC to pick up our other two friends, we were all settled in to a lovely cabin in the Borscht belt, the snow gently collecting outside.
I'm gonna dispense with the narrative at this point because it's getting boring. We did shrooms. I nibbled the dried fungi in salsa, the brittle cremini-like texture shattering under my teeth.
Shrooms, I think, return you to childhood. My friend went back to his pleasant childhood with loving parents (yes I know it wasn't all good, shut up). I saw the kid in him, the unadulterated core of the ten-year-old. And for him, it was a delight. For me, childhood was a rather darker time. I lay in bed with another friend, and in that moment I was lying in bed with my mom in 1992, a terrified five-year-old who knew he was alive and would some day die and couldn't do a fucking thing about it. She's a social worker, and she held my hand and told me: these people I work with, they all want to go to sleep. And I come in, and I yell, "Wake up!"
She and I just lay in that bed, and I stared at the flimsy white walls and cheap lamp and thought, yeah, this is what that was like.
Later that night I decided I was done, so I poured myself a pint of wine and chugged it (alcohol kills shroom trips, or so I'm told). I got angry, I wanted to prove that I was good at stuff because that's what makes me feel like I'm worth something, so I cooked dinner. Pasta with a tomato and anchovy sauce, with little chicken-broth arancini to start. I was mad, drunk, tripping, stoned, emptied entirely out.
My friends talked me through the rest, my bad relationship, my worries. Drugs allow me to talk through my feelings, and I guess I wish I could do it without them, but not really. What I really wish is that I didn't have to, that I didn't have so much trash to dig through in the first place. Drugs aren't bad, they aren't good, they're there, they're food, they're drink, they're a tool that sometimes you need when you gotta get shit done, and sometimes the shit you gotta get done is feeling something. And yeah, there are good ones and bad ones, good ways to use them and bad ways to use them, good setting, bad setting, but you know what, I'm sure glad they're there, because it's a shitload easier eating some mushrooms or a watermelon-candy edible and changing your life a little bit at a time than it is to do that shit all by your guarded and helpless little self.
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At long last, I have Doogie Howser's computer diary.
I've been chasing this high my whole life.
I'm starting this journal because I need a place to get my thoughts out that's a little more public and a little less precious than a paper diary (though not by much on either count). I like the idea of using Gemini because I get that nice sneaky feeling of sitting in a darkened room click-clacking on my loud springy keyboard, and it feels less pointless than just writing something in a textfile and letting it sit on my computer in eternal solitude.
Even more important to me, though, is the fact that for the first time since I ventured onto the Internet via a WebTV (lol) in about 1997, I actually have a little slice of it to call my own. I'm probably the least technically skilled person who uses Gemini. I've never had a reason to have my own site, but I've always kind of wanted to, and now I have this. So yeah, don't expect the tech-heavy kind of diary that seems to be the thing on here. I'm probably gonna write about food and booze a lot though, so if that's what you're into as well, enjoy.